Matthew Botos

One of the great things about technology is how it allows everyone to create and share content - writing, photos, videos, etc. It’s easy to do online with increasingly sophisticated sites, but can still be a struggle when you need a physical production.

My Christmas cards are a prime example; they’re just non-standard enough to merit a custom job by having a photo on the front and a letter’s worth of text on the inside. Online printers aren’t setup for such custom jobs, and traditional local printers still charge high setup fees. Doing it yourself tends to lead to subpar products for the time invested fighting with your own printer.

A growing middle ground is the office supply stores with their own small business and personal printing services. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have the equipment or staff to do much beyond the basics. Even getting non-custom jobs done there involved a fair amount of standing around waiting for them to figure it out while being interrupted by other customers and jobs.

In general, I’ve found online options to be the most efficient, even given delivery time and charges. Both business cards and other photo products I’ve ordered tend to arrive quickly and have an impressive quality to them. There’s still a gap when it comes to custom work; does anyone know of a reasonable online custom print shop?

After trying homebrew spreadsheets and Quicken to manage my finances, I decided to give mint.com a try. Pure viral marketing finally got me - I saw a friend declare himself a “fan” of the site on Facebook.

Setup was quite easy; it grabs account information with much less fuss than Quicken. It uses an established provider to this, which eases some of the worries that a web startup has all your banking information. From there, you get an immediate overview of your finances, and offers from their presumed partners on how you can save money. Not a bad business model, especially when you consider the email alerts and updates it sends to keep you coming back.

It does have a few shortcomings: it only pulls in your last month’s worth of information and doesn’t always set new categories successfully, making it more difficult to use the budgeting and analysis capabilities. It did turn up some good tempting deals, though it missed some of my current credit card rewards.

The interface is smooth, though, and with everything moving to the web, personal finance can’t be far behind - even Quicken is getting in on the game.

US News and World Report named being an engineer one of 2008’s best jobs:

If youre an inveterate tinkerer, with enough math and science ability to survive a five-to-six-year bachelors degree, engineering could be your calling. Turnover is very low, although twice as many women as men leave the profession. And theres strong demand for engineers, who are among the highest-paid bachelors-level professionals.

Taking their points in order:

• It’s certainly a good career for math and science types, though the majority of bachelor’s programs are still four years unless you do an extensive internship or co-op. And at today’s tuition rates, there’s certainly motivation to finish on time and on budget, which is also good future career training!
• There are a dearth of women in engineering, particularly the hard-core technical specialities, which doesn’t seem to lure many more. If you want a more balanced work environment, you have to find a company whose other jobs do attract women.
• Demand and pay are quite good for a job without an advanced degree and the associated debt and time. It’s done well for me, particularly once I got past some the initial post graduation debt of school and car loans.

Overall, I’m inclined to agree with their assessment: if you’re into tinkering with hardware and software, there are plenty of opportunities for engineers in the world today.

My prophecy about switching to an SLR camera has become self-fulfilling; I spend way too much time obsessing over future lens purchases. A lot of it is one-step thinking: what would the next lens be and how would it fit with what I already have? Taking a step back to thing about what overall system of lenses would be useful led to the following more sensible list (in order of purchase):

1. 50mm f1.4 prime $300 - quality low-light, indoor, and portrait lens (on a small sensor). An easy choice since I already own it Though it sometimes feels a little long, I’m finding it still takes a lot of compelling shots.
2. EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS $485 - general purpose travel medium zoom, higher quality than the kit lens with a little more reach and image stabilization. I just bought a slightly used one at a discount, and I can now sell the kit lens to offset the price a bit more.
3. 70-200mm f4 L $540 - long zoom, not to mention the undeniable appeal of having a white L lens! There are a lot of lenses in this range; this one seems to be a good middle ground in cost, quality, and reach.
4. 100mm f2.8 macro $450 - debatable, which puts it last on the list. Since I’m my father’s child, I enjoyed doing a bit of macro work with my point and shoot, but I haven’t missed it as much as I thought since switching to an SLR.

It’s not on my list, but I have to include it to show just how crazy you can go with camera accessories: a camouflage cover for your lens. I guess the only thing more extreme than waving an L-series telephoto around is stalking your subjects with a camouflage one and a ghillie suit!

Since I didn’t need a wide angle lens to photograph the last sunset of the year on New Year’s Eve, I had a chance to take the same tripod shot with both the Canon Digital Rebel XTi kit lens at 55mm and the Canon 50mm prime lens. The comparison is yet another data point in my obsessive research before purchasing my next lens and the trade-offs in cost, quality, and capability it entails.

In particular, there’s a noticeable difference in sharpness in the tree branches. It’s not the cleanest comparison since the kit lens shot has a higher ISO as well - next time I’m out I’ll have to strive for a more scientific showdown. Here are the 100% samples so you can judge for yourself: